thoughts, links, and comments for an interesting retirement

Category: investing

While the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes one negative change for Roth IRAs, they are still pretty wonderful. Here’s what you need to know about Roth IRAs and especially Roth IRA conversions in the post-TCJA world.

The two most-important Roth IRA tax advantages are:
Unlike traditional IRA withdrawals, qualified Roth IRA withdrawals are federal-income-tax-free and usually state-income-tax-free too. What is a qualified withdrawal? It’s one that is taken after you, as the Roth account owner, have met both of the following requirements:

1. You’ve had at least one Roth IRA open for over five years.
2. You’ve reached age 59½ or become disabled or dead.

I need to investigate if item 1 above is correct. You only need to have ‘at least on Roth IRA open for over five years’?

Last week we got a reminder of just how volatile the stock market can be, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 370 points, or 1.8%, in a single day on political turmoil in Washington. The stock market has already recovered from that setback. But at some point, though we don’t know when, this aging bull market will give way to a bear …